ICT news

• NASA Replaces ULA's Vulcan Centaur With SpaceX Falcon Heavy For Solar Storm Research

  26-07-2026 23:46 via science.slashdot.org
  There's been a change to NASA's launch of six satellites for solar storms research. Space.com reports that those satellites "were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update."
  [NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment mision — or SunRISE] will fly to space as part of a rideshare mission sponsored by the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command. Though it's not st
  
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• Apple's Smart Glasses Delayed, As Engineers Consider Privacy Concerns

  26-07-2026 22:41 via apple.slashdot.org
  Digital Trends reports:Apple could unveil its first smart glasses at WWDC in June 2027, followed by a consumer release toward the end of the year, according to Bloomberg... Part of the delay reportedly stems from Apple's engineering and marketing teams spending more time refining the product and deciding how to address the privacy concerns...
  Apple has reportedly considered glasses without cameras, as well as a version where the cameras can analyse the surroundings but cannot record photos or vi
  
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• Google's Anti-search-scraping Lawsuit Dismissed

  26-07-2026 21:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  A U.S. district court "has dismissed Google's case against SerpApi over that company's scraping of search results to train AI models," reports Computerworld. Google had claimed that it was protecting copyright holders — and that SerpApi's actions breached America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
  [Google] made two claims: first, that no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title, and second that no person s
  
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• Wildfires, Evacuations, and Smoke Hit Europe and North America

  26-07-2026 20:39 via news.slashdot.org
  270,000 people have been displaced by wildfires in France and Spain, reports the Guardian. A wildfire even forced evacuations in Scotland.
  And wildfires "have now scorched four million acres of land in the U.S.," reports NPR, as tens of millions of people in North America "are continuing to endure hazardous smoke from out of control wildfires burning across Canada and the Western U.S."
  At America's National Interagency Fire Center, NPR's wildfire correspondent says all of America's firefighting
  
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• AI-Equipped Garbage Trucks Could Soon Start Spying On People in the US

  26-07-2026 19:39 via news.slashdot.org
  America's garbage trucks can do more than just collect trash, reports Newsweek. They may also help identify code violations using AI.Officials in Cape Coral, Florida, recently considered equipping sanitation trucks with AI-powered cameras that would photograph properties as crews complete their normal collection routes. The system would have been designed to identify potential issues such as overgrown lawns, peeling paint, and illegal dumping, and to flag violations so the city staff can review
  
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• Is Huawei Building Its Own DRAM Fab?

  26-07-2026 18:39 via hardware.slashdot.org
  From the site tech-news site XDA Developers:
  The consumer tech economy needs more DRAM manufacturers, and it needs them more urgently than perhaps at any point in its history. Anyone keeping track of the pricing trends will know that memory prices have climbed into the stratosphere on the back of AI infrastructure's relentless demand, and every consumer device that depends on RAM has traveled from inflated to unaffordable, quarter after quarter, with almost no relief in sight. Which is exactly w
  
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• Three Astronauts Safely Return from Space Station, Landing in Kazakhstan Steppe

  26-07-2026 17:39 via science.slashdot.org
  "Welcome home!" NASA posted on X.com, sharing footage of a successful "parachute-assisted" landing on a Kazakhstan steppe for the Soyuz MS-28, carrying three astronauts who'd spent 241 days on the International Space Station. (And YouTube has a full two-hour video with NASA's coverage of the landing.)
  A NASA web page notes they orbited Earth 3,856 times and traveling more than 102 million miles after docking with the Space Station on November 27. It was the first mission for NASA astronaut Chris
  
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• Typo-Squatting Scammers Con South Carolina Town Out of $545K

  26-07-2026 16:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  It started with some underground utility work for the South Carolina town of Surfside Beach (population: 4,155). "Public records confirm that a payment of $545,598.30 was issued," according to a local news station — but the CEO of Wildcat Contractors "stated that the account that received the money is a scammer account and that his company has an overdue invoice for underground utility work completed in Surfside Beach."
  Yahoo picks up the story:After the payment issue surfaced, Wildcat sai
  
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• A Promising Process For Nuclear Fuel Re-use and Disposal?

  26-07-2026 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  A Canadian lab has run a chemical process on real spent nuclear fuel "and pulled out 90% of the long-lived danger in 24 hours, the part that forces a burial site to last 100,000 years," notes the blog Autonocio, "with the leftovers meant to fuel a reactor."
  The standard plan for spent nuclear fuel is to wait it out. You pull the used bundles from a reactor, sit them in a pool of water for seven to ten years while the heat and radiation come down, seal them in concrete casks, and look for somewhe
  
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• Comic-Con 2026 Debuts Trailers for 'Coyote vs Acme' Movie, Plus 'Neuromancer' and 'Blade Runner 2099' Series

  26-07-2026 09:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Big news from Comic-Con 2026:"Coyote vs. ACME" debuted its long-awaited final trailer. CNET calls it "an animation-meets-live-action story," with the Coyote catapulting into theaters this August 28. (The film began development back in 2018, but was shelved for a tax write-off in 2023 by Warner Bros. until a backlash led to its sale to Ketchup Entertainment.) "Fed up with Acme's unreliable products, Wile E. Coyote decides to hire a lawyer and sue the company..." writes CNET. "The movie also featu
  
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• 32 of 35 Students Caught Using Hilariously Wrong AI-Generated Answers for Professor's Midterm

  26-07-2026 05:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "32 of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response," history professor Jason Gibson says in a viral video shared over 10 million times. "And apparently, they didn't proofread it."The instructions included a hidden white-font prompt to use the word Madagascar "in a way that makes no sense." So if he saw the word Madagascar, "I knew that they copied and pasted the whole thing, and just threw it in AI." Futurism rep
  
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• Firefox's New Tab Page Will Get Widgets - Including an AI-Powered Daily Crossword

  26-07-2026 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  In a sign of the times, Firefox's New Tab page could soon include a crossword puzzle from AI-powered news platform Particle. The blog OMG Ubuntu reports:The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content Particle's AI has ingested and summarised that day. [After solving the crossword, links appear to related news articles...] If you just want to try the crossword, you access it in any browser via a direct link.
  While it may look like Mozilla is trying to capitalis
  
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• Firefox' New Tab Page Will Get Widgets - Including an AI-Powered Daily Crossword

  26-07-2026 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  In a sign of the times, Firefox's New Tab page could soon include a crossword puzzle from AI-powered news platform Particle. The blog OMG Ubuntu reports:The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content Particle's AI has ingested and summarised that day. [After solving the crossword, links appear to related news articles...] If you just want to try the crossword, you access it in any browser via a direct link.
  While it may look like Mozilla is trying to capitalis
  
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• Did Virginia Regulators Downplay Data Center Health Concerns?

  26-07-2026 01:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Politico reports that in the Virginia area alone there's dozens of data center projects "that altogether need 70 gigawatts of power — equivalent to 70 nuclear plants" — currently seeking connection to their grid. But there's also concerns about a Virginia data center powered with natural gas and backup diesel generators:
  When Virginia's top environmental regulator received an analysis warning of data center pollution, it took him less than five minutes to forward it to seven people o
  
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• Drying Lakebeds Are Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon, Study Finds

  26-07-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  "In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit," reports ScienceAlert:In a new study published in Science, scientists say the Aral Sea — the world's largest desiccated lake — has emitted a whopping 204 megatons (~225 million US tons) of carbon dioxide since it was drained in the 1960s... The study estimates that between 1960 and 2022, the evaporating sea ha
  
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